Homeowners desperate to sell are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds buying properties they do not want to shunt along buyer chains so their homes can be sold.

The credit crunch means that there are fewer cash buyers, leading to chains becoming longer. This leads to purchases falling through as buyers fail to secure mortgages or get a discount on asking prices. Agents say that growing numbers of buyers have begun to buy properties further down chains to clear the way for their own homes to be sold.

One homeowner told the Financial Times that she had been able to sell her house for £450,000 in order to trade up to a £700,000 home only by buying an apartment at the bottom of her chain for £200,000.

“I know several people doing this,” she said. “It allows you to retain some exposure to the property and gets everything moving so you can sell.” The London estate agent Hamptons International said that some clients sold properties for £2 million to £3 million only after buying homes further down the chain for about £300,000. In many cases the cheaper property is retained by the buyer and rented out or given to their offspring.

“Every sale is a bit more precarious in the current market and if the chain breaks down, the buyer at the top wants to make sure their sale goes through,” Mark Anderson, managing director of Hamptons, said. “If they are prepared to be a bit more creative they can get the sale they want.”

Another leading agent, Savills, said that country homes worth between £1 million and £2 million fell in value by 5.2 per cent in the three months to June. It is estimated that 4,000 estate agents have lost their jobs and that this could rise to 10,000 by the end of the year.